The MESA Manifesto discusses the motivation for the MESA project, outlines a MESA code of conduct, and describes the establishment of a MESA Council. Before using MESA, you should read the manifesto document. Here’s a brief extract of some of the key points

Stellar evolution calculations remain a basic tool of broad impact for astrophysics. New observations constantly test the models, even in 1D. The continued demand requires the construction of a general, modern stellar evolution code that combines the following advantages:

Performance: runs well on a personal computer and makes effective use of parallelism with multi-core architectures.

Users are encouraged to add to the capabilities of MESA, which will remain a community resource. However, use of MESA requires adherence to the MESA code of conduct:

403 BI OBSIDIAN Zoom Men NIKE Air 12 WORK Running s Shoes BLUE Vomero DARK That all publications and presentations (research, educational, or outreach) deriving from the use of MESA acknowledge the MESA Instrument papers.

That user modifications and additions are given back to the community.

That users alert the MESA Council about their publications, either pre-release or at the time of publication.

That users make available in a timely fashion (e.g., online at the MESA website) all information needed for others to recreate their MESA results – “open know how” to match “open source.”

That users agree to help others learn MESA, giving back as the project progresses.

There are many ways this will be done: supporting the contributors, maintaining the web access and web page updates, seeking enabling funding, holding yearly working groups that allow for continued engagement, documenting MESA development in the refereed literature, and sustaining advanced development.